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COVID-19, Race, Climate Change Dominate Youth Vote Issues
Health care and racism dominate the issues important to young people in the presidential election, according to poll trackers.
Climate change is also among the top three issues to young voters, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, found in its polling.
The Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government echoed those findings. About 45% of Americans age 30 and younger agreed they were concerned about having access to health care and mental health care. In addition, 43% of young Americans agreed that they were concerned about someone they know dying from COVID-19.
Gun violence and student loan debt are other issues that will impact young people's lives in the next five to 10 years, said Joseph Mullen, an 18-year-old DNC delegate from Florida’s 23rd congressional district.
“We want elected officials and politicians who are a little bit older than us who, you know, may not be dealing with the ramifications of what they decide in the next 10 to 15 years,” Mullen told VOA. “We want them to act as if it was their lives on the line and it’s their children’s lives on the line as well.”
Health care and racism reflect the concerns of younger voters at a time when colleges and universities have been shuttered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and when racism and law enforcement have been in the national discussion. These have overshadowed student debt concerns that dominated youth voter polls in previous election cycles.
“We have issues like climate change, student loans, free college tuition, free two-year community college, and affordable health care being addressed, and I think those are all really important things to young voters,” said Jordan Harzynski, a freshman at George Mason University in Virginia.
“I think that leadership and rhetoric matters, so up and down the ballot I want candidates that I can trust, and I think that character is playing a bigger role in the minds of a lot of voters this year given the moment were in,” said Josh Kutner, a senior at George Washington University and chairman of GW College Republicans.
“The foremost issue to all voters right now is obviously the coronavirus, as it plays such a major role in our everyday lives now and one aspect of it is making sure we have testing capability and we are able to fully distribute an effective vaccine,” Kutner said.
Young voters are also very concerned about “police treatment to communities of color,” according to a June survey by CIRCLE.
Sanjana Taskar, a recent graduate of the University of Maryland-Baltimore County and an advocate of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, said BLM “is demanding justice to be treated equal and recognizing how our foundation of government was founded on the principles of white patriarchy.”
Concern for climate change is increasing among Democrats, and young Republican voters show a higher interest in politicians attending to climate change than older Republicans, according to Pew Research Center in Washington.
“Millennial and Gen Z Republicans – those currently ages 18 to 39 – are more likely than their GOP elders to think humans have a large role in climate change, that the federal government is doing too little on climate and that the U.S. should focus on developing alternative energy sources,” according to a survey, Pew Research Center stated.
Spencer Lindquist, a junior at Pepperdine University and president of Pepperdine College Republicans, said for him, immigration and student debt were entwined.
“Immigration is an issue that affects young people in particular in a very unique way,” Lindquist said. Graduates accrue student debt “and then they find that they have to compete with people around the world for these positions,” citing Indian and Chinese H-1 work visa holders.
Youth demographics
Young Americans are more engaged in this election than in the previous election, according to CIRCLE.
According to the Tufts CIRCLE survey, “83% say they believe young people have the power to change the country, 60% feel like they’re part of a movement that will vote to express its views, and 79% of young people say the COVID-19 pandemic has helped them realize that politics impact their everyday lives.”
Out of 2,232 voters surveyed, ages 18 to 29, half said that they have tried to persuade people to vote and a quarter said they helped others register to vote, according to CIRCLE. This is significant as it is an increase from the 33% of youth who tried to persuade others to vote and 11% who registered others to vote in the 2018 election.
In 2016, the last presidential election, a little more than 40% of 18 to 29-year-olds voted, according to the United States Elections Project.
While more young Americans are engaged in this year's election, how much they believe the election will actually affect them can depend on race. A recent Harvard poll found that 64% of young white Americans were more likely to agree the election will impact their lives compared with 52% of young black Americans.
Engagement among young voters could be because of issues they believe to be impacting both America and themselves, going into the election. Young voters like the idea of voting for something and feeling mobilized versus voting against something, according to Mullen.
Mullen says that while he is a fan of candidates’ campaign efforts to reach young voters, it’s a mistake for politicians to reiterate the idea of “returning to normalcy.”
“Things have never really felt normal in this country. I was born right after 9/11, and the only things I’ve ever seen in the U.S. have been, you know, wars, recessions and pandemics,” Mullen said. “That’s just what I’ve grown up with.”
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Many master's degrees aren't worth the investment, research shows
Nearly half of master's degrees have a negative financial return, according to new research by the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, an economic research organization.
The study indicates that many graduate degree programs do not increase lifetime earnings enough to be worth it.
While 23% of bachelor’s degree programs yield a negative financial return on investment, 43% of two-year degrees and master’s degrees fail to deliver a return, according to the study by Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at FREOPP.
Cooper assessed the return on investment for 53,000 degree and certificate programs to determine whether a student’s lifetime earnings outweigh program costs and the risk of not completing their degree.
His findings show that a student’s field of study was the overriding indicator of return on investment at the undergraduate and graduate level.
Engineering, computer science and nursing bachelor’s degrees have high financial returns on investment, while programs in education, fine arts, psychology and English usually have low returns.
Graduate degrees in medicine and law tend to have strong payoffs. But a large share of master’s programs, including the MBA, frequently have low payoffs, according to Cooper.
Although workers with master’s degrees earn 16% more than those with only bachelor’s degrees, Cooper says the figure fails to account for students who had “higher preexisting earnings potential.”
“MBA students typically have high preexisting earnings potential, having often chosen high-ROI undergraduate majors such as finance and economics,” Cooper writes. “So the MBA adds little value on top of that.”
The study indicates that high starting salaries are predictors of high returns on investment. Degrees with starting salaries of $57,000 a year or more deliver the best lifetime returns.
But the return on investment of a degree can vary depending on the educational institution.
“Students interested in fields with low average pay can still find some schools that do well transforming those fields of study into high-paying careers,” Cooper writes.
The quality of an institution also matters, said William Tierney, professor emeritus of higher education at the University of Southern California.
“An MBA from Harvard is a likely ticket to a good job,” Tierney told VOA. “An MBA from the University of Phoenix, less so.”
But students pursue graduate programs for more than just financial reasons.
“Some degrees open up careers in fields that students may enjoy, such as in the performing arts,” Robert Kelchen, head of educational leadership at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, told VOA.
“Others can help gain access to social networks or simply help students learn about a topic that is of interest,” Kelchen added.
Cooper told VOA that it might make sense for students in degree programs with low returns on investment to switch majors if they can still graduate on time.
He found the worst outcome for a student’s return on investment is dropping out of college “because they must pay for one or more years’ tuition and spend time out of the labor force.”
Lawmakers who fund higher education have a responsibility in ensuring “higher education delivers on its promise of economic mobility,” Cooper said.
Nearly a third of federal funding, including Pell grants and student loans, pays for higher education programs that fail to provide students with a return on investment, according to the study.
Cooper’s view is that “some schools should shut down low-ROI programs and reallocate institutional resources to programs with a better return.”
“There's definitely this narrative out there that higher education is always worth it, and you should always try to get that extra degree because it will increase your earnings,” he told VOA. “That's reinforced by colleges who make lofty promises regarding their graduate degree programs' outcomes, which all too often fall short.”
Harvard students end protest as school agrees to discuss Gaza conflict
Protesters against the war between Israel and Hamas were voluntarily taking down their tents in Harvard Yard on Tuesday after university officials agreed to discuss their questions about the endowment, bringing a peaceful end to the kinds of demonstrations that were broken up by police on other campuses.
The student protest group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine said in a statement that the encampment "outlasted its utility with respect to our demands." Meanwhile, Harvard University interim President Alan Garber agreed to pursue a meeting between protesters and university officials regarding the students' questions.
Students at many college campuses this spring set up similar encampments, calling for their schools to cut ties with Israel and businesses that support it.
The Israel-Hamas war began when Hamas and other militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7, killing some 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages. Palestinian militants still hold about 100 captives, and Israel's military has killed more than 35,000 people in Gaza, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Harvard said its president and the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Hopi Hoekstra, will meet with the protesters to discuss the conflict in the Middle East.
The protesters said they worked out an agreement to meet with university officials, including the Harvard Management Company, which oversees the world's largest academic endowment, valued at about $50 billion.
The protesters' statement said the students will set an agenda that includes discussions on disclosure, divestment, reinvestment and the creation of a Center for Palestine Studies. The students also said that Harvard has offered to retract suspensions of more than 20 students and student workers and back down on disciplinary measures faced by 60 more.
"Since its establishment three weeks ago, the encampment has both broadened and deepened Palestine solidarity organizing on campus," a spokesperson for the protesters said. "It has moved the needle on disclosure and divestment at Harvard."
